I Kept Every Letter He Wrote Me (Well… not exactly.) – Behind the Pages | Juliet Ellison Fiction

It’s a romantic idea, isn’t it? Keeping the letters someone wrote you. Tied in ribbon. Soft at the folds. Full of words that still make your heart do that little dip.

But in our story… he was the one who kept the letters. 
Because I was the one who wrote them.

We met in the late ’90s—before “meeting online” was common, let alone cool. He posted something. I answered. And just like that, we became our own version of a mail-order romance. No prairie. No stagecoach. Just a long-distance start and a lot of waiting.

We lived about a hundred miles apart, and I didn’t know how to do all the fancy new digital stuff he used so easily. He was already sending messages and sharing things online, and I… well, I had stamps. So I wrote him actual letters. On paper. Folded them up. Sent them through the mail.

And he kept every single one.

Meanwhile, he sent me all kinds of messages—emails, voice recordings, texts on devices I barely knew how to use. Eventually I learned, and yes—I saved his too. Just not in a shoebox with ribbon. I saved his in folders, in inboxes, in my phone. And in my heart.

Funny story? 
I didn’t even know how to send him a picture before we met. So I faxed one. 
It came out completely black.

He teased me later and said, “For a second, I wasn’t sure what you looked like at all!” 
We laughed about it then, and we laughed about it until he passed.

He agreed to meet me anyway—sight unseen—and that weekend, he taught me how to email a photo the right way. (Turns out, there is a right way.)

When I started writing Letters from Willow Creek, I kept thinking about that feeling. The one where your words matter to someone. Where what you send out into the world is kept—not because it’s fancy, but because it’s you.

So yes, I kept everything he sent me. 
And he kept everything I sent him.

And really… that says everything.

—Juliet